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Topic: Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Co. (Read 20495 times)

The last time I was in Chicago I had an unusual type of deep dish pizza. I was planning on eating at RJ Grunt's, a place I used to eat at right by Lincoln Park when I was in the vicinity. It was packed at lunchtime and there were like 400 of those Eddie Bauer strollers blocking every aisle so I decided to try somewhere else. Right around the corner was a place called the Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Co.

This restaurant has the dubious distinction of being located directly across the street from where the St. Valentine's Day Massacre took place. There used to be a garage there but now it is just an empty lot.

As it turns out, the pizza they serve is actually a pizza pot pie!

It was a very unique take on pizza. To make it they place a layer of cheese on the bottom of an oven proof bowl. Then they fill the bowl with sausage, mushrooms, onions, and marinara. Then they cover the bowl with a round piece of thinly rolled out dough and bake it in the oven. To serve it they turn it over on the plate and use a spoon to shell it out.

It wasn't what I would think of as 'traditional' Chicago-style deep dish, but it was an interesting twist and actually quite tasty.

Hello Foodblogger;Very unusal "pizza"; maybe even unique. Do you have any dimensions on it? The width, the heigth, etc? I would like to try to duplicate it at home, but am not sure of the dimensions. I am assuming that the entire "pizza" is a serving for one person?? Thanks... Buffalo

Dimensions of the finished pie were 6 inches wide by 2 inches deep. The bowl they made it in was a 6 inch straight-sided ceramic bowl with a little lip at the top. The dough overlapped the lip and extended down the sides of the bowl. When they served it they brought it out upside down like a pot pie. To serve it to me they then flipped it upside down (crust side down) on a plate. To get the bowl out of the pot pie they ran a spoon around the inside of the crust and shelled the bowl out that way. I haven't tried making these at home yet but I have thought about how I would do it.

1) The dough was a soft, bready dough, not a biscuity dough. I am sure it is just a fairly standard bread dough recipe that they are using so I would probably just make up my favorite white bread recipe and go from there.

2) The dough rose, but the crust wasn't too thick, and it wasn't browned and hard. To achieve that result I will probably bake the toppings separately from the dough for a while until the cheese melts. I would probably have the oven at about 350 so that when I put the dough in it wouldn't brown too quickly or get hard on the outside. I would take the toppings out of the oven, let the dish cool momentarily, and then put the dough on and return it to the oven. I plan to have the dough rolled out very thin.

3) The bowl is very important. I haven't gone looking for anything like that yet but I am sure you could find one at Williams-Sonoma or wherever you go for cooking stuff.

I do have to say that I never have seen pizza like it anywhere else. I might attempt to recreate the pizza-pot-pie in the near future, but I have to try some of the recipes from this forum first. I am so excited that I finally found a group of people who are as crazy about making good pizza as I am.

Another thing to notice about the pizza is that the crust has the texture/doneness that I would associate more with pizza-chain style breadstick than a Uno's/Malnati's style crust. If nothing else it is nice to have a pie to make every once in a while to change things up.

3) The bowl is very important. I haven't gone looking for anything like that yet but I am sure you could find one at Williams-Sonoma or wherever you go for cooking stuff.

Don't waste your time or money looking for a special bowl. Any ovenproof bowl will work. I've been using Corelle soup bowls to make pizza potpies since I ran across Evelyne Slomon's instructions for making pizza pot pies in The Pizza Book 15+ years ago.

Don't waste your time or money looking for a special bowl. Any ovenproof bowl will work. I've been using Corelle soup bowls to make pizza potpies since I ran across Evelyne Slomon's instructions for making pizza pot pies in The Pizza Book 15+ years ago.

I am interested in your recipe/techniques. With that much experience I bet you could lend a lot of insite on this subject. Care to share with us?

Don't mean to blow you off, but there's really not that much to share. Slomon does a good job covering all the bases. Pam posted a condensed version of Slomon's instructions here. The only thing I do differently is I put the cheese in the bowl before the sauce, but other than that, I follow her instructions to a "T."

I've never had a problem with the crust not browning, as appears to be the case with the pie in your picture, but if the crust isn't browning to your satisfaction you could always turn on the broiler for a couple minutes to "finish" it.

That's stolen word-for-word from Evelyne Slomon's book, and, yes, "stolen" is the proper term in this instance. While a recipe itself can't be copyrighted, per se, a description, the presentation, and the specific wording can be, and in this instance, the description, presentation format, hints, suggestions, and notes are copied, word-for-word, without credit or attribution.

I just saw this place profiled on the Food Network (I think). If I recall, they lay slices of cheese into the bowl, then drop in a couple of whole mushrooms, add sauce, and then drape a large sheet of dough over the whole bowl and bake.

I really enjoyed my trip there. I've thought about doing something like this at home but I can only make so many pizzas a week and I'm fixating on thin crust at the moment. I was hoping that someone else would take an interest and give it a shot. Another thing they probably do is brush the finished pies with butter. I remember a distinct butter flavor on the surface of the crust. Look at the picture above. See the oily sheen?

It would probably just be easier to put all the toppings in the bowl and then put the rolled out dough over the top, rather than par-baking it. The photo of the pizza above is actually a pizza served at the restaurant. The pie I was served was baked until the dough was done, but not brown and hard. The crust was very very soft with little or no browning.

Sure, but I stopped posting, it didn't draw any interest. When I made it the first time it was AMAZING! Light, crunchy and delicate with great flavor but have been unable to replicate the texture. My hydration level is off. I should have it figured out fairly soon though.

Can someone describe the texture of the Chicago pizza and Grinder pot pie dough. The sight describes a triple-rise sicilian dough. I read some reviews saying it was neither chewy or crispy, and somewhat bland.

I started work on a formula for the dough. I have beautiful browning but the final product is too chewy for a pleasant pot pie. It would be better suited for a hand-held calzone or pizza pocket.

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Can someone describe the texture of the Chicago pizza and Grinder pot pie dough. The sight describes a triple-rise sicilian dough. I read some reviews saying it was neither chewy or crispy, and somewhat bland.

I started work on a formula for the dough. I have beautiful browning but the final product is too chewy for a pleasant pot pie. It would be better suited for a hand-held calzone or pizza pocket.

Haven't had the real thing from the restaurant, so I can't comment on their dough, but the Slomon dough is more like an American-style (Papa John's/Domino's) dough than a typical potpie dough.

Can someone describe the texture of the Chicago pizza and Grinder pot pie dough. The sight describes a triple-rise sicilian dough. I read some reviews saying it was neither chewy or crispy, and somewhat bland.

Their discription is exactly right. I posted a picture of one of the pies from the actual restaurant right at the beginning of this thread - post #1. The crust is very soft and not chewy at all. There was almost NO BROWNING of the crust. The texture was very similar to the Sicilian pie I made last weekend. If you wanted to recreate that I would strongly suggest lowering the water content from my recipe. I would make it something like this:

The total hydration would be at 65%. It is WAY too wet of a dough as I originally published it to be able to use for a pot pie. Who knows, 65% may be too much and you might want to lower the water to 30% for a total of 60%. Keep the milk where it is though, I really liked what the milk added to the crust. I think milk is what is making their crust so tender and moist. I also lowered the salt for this formulation from 2.5% to 2% anticipating that you would want to do this as a same day rise - ie wake up in the morning, throw together the dough and let it rise on the counter to be baked at night. If you even wanted a shorter rise I would lower the salt content even further, say to 1.5 to 1.75%. It might take making a few batches to figure this stuff out.

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I started work on a formula for the dough. I have beautiful browning but the final product is too chewy for a pleasant pot pie. It would be better suited for a hand-held calzone or pizza pocket.

If you are looking to duplicate the restaurant's crust, then you absolutely do not want beautiful browning. You don't want the dough to brown very much if at all. I would suggest baking these on the middle rack at a lower temperature than you usually would -- like 350 or so. The lower temperature should keep the crust nice and soft and keep it from browning too much.